‘Piracy destroying broadcasting’

The entry of Multichoice has revolutionised broadcasting, especially TV cable broadcast, in Nigeria. However, there are insinuations that the firm charges higher rates in Nigeria than it does in its home country, South Africa, a charge denied by Nico Meyer, chief executive, Multichoice Africa. In this interview with SIMEON EBULU, he also speaks on piracy and other issues.

How important is Africa Magic Viewers’ Choice Awards and its impact on content development in Africa?

From our perspective in Multichoice, we continue to invest in local content and Africa Magic Viewer’s Choice Awards is part and parcel of the recognition of local content and its development across the continent. We use the Africa Magic Viewer’s Choice Awards as a platform to help nurture local content.

What is your assessment of the impact of Multichoice, DSTV and GOTV content on African subscribers?

For us, it’s about an experience and the way to convey the experience is through content. So, DSTV, which has already been on the continent for 20 years, does exactly that. We have also recently launched GOTV to enhance the service. So, to us, content is extremely important to both DSTV and GOTV subscribers, especially local African content. That partly accounted for our huge investment in it, as well as the AMVCA rewards.

People have observed that your charges are higher in Nigeria than South Africa. Why?

That’s simply not true. When compared, in terms of our services that we provide in other African countries, Nigeria is one of the lowest in terms of what we charge. But also bear in mind that we also provide services for different levels of income. So, we have structured our bouquets to actually satisfy the different levels of income. The GOTV service is by far the lowest as per cost and it goes up gradually into the different tiers of services we provide on DSTV, up to premium bouquet. Now when you compare that to the entire continent, Nigeria is actually one of the lowest.

Normally in financial planning, a large subscriber base should result in reduced charges. How has that worked for DSTV in terms of pricing?

There are a couple of factors here that we need to take cognisance of. One is that we continue to invest in local content. So you would have seen over the last 10 years that we continue to invest more and more into local content.

Secondly, with a lot of the international content that we bring, payment is based on the number of people using the services. So, when you have an increase in the number of people using the service, the cost also increases proportionate to the increase in the number of people using the service.

So, you find that when you continue to invest in the industry, that the cost is increasing over time. Part of our investment in local content is because it’s so important to nurture local content in the development of quantities.

For instance in Nairobi, Kenya, we have set up a studio to facilitate the creation of local content. Also in Lagos, we have studios here, and we are in the process of bringing more and more content into the studios here in Lagos. It is important that we continue to invest in the industry because that is the only way you get the industry to continue to grow.

How is Multichoice Africa positioning, compared to competition?

As I have said, we have been on the continent for more than two decades. So, we are here for the long run. Also, over the last 10 years, we have invested heavily in local content through the means of Africa Magic.

So, we are focused on bringing the best digital television experience to the consumer. And that is where our investment is. Our altitude towards competition is that we welcome competition. And the reason we welcome competition is that it expands the industry.

Our belief is that as the industry grows, the quality of content will increase over time to such an extent that we will be able to export some of the content into the international market. And that is when we believe the industry will be on the right track.

In terms of Corporate Social Responsibility, how does Muiltichoice contribute to the community?

Corporate social investment is extremely important to us. Where we see ourselves playing that role is in the area of education on the continent. Our focus over many years, is in the Multichoice Resource Centres. We have rolled out these resource centres around the continent.

In Nigeria, we have about 300 resource centres. And what we do at the resource centres, is that we utilise the content that we have for the growth of our education sector. We focus around the Natural Geographic Channel, the Animal Channel and the History channel.

In other words, the educational content that we have, is provided in these resource centres, which are school-based for free. And this really helps education on the continent. And this has had a lot of impact across the continent and Multichoice has been doing this for so many years, and we will continue to do so.

What has been the impact of piracy on your subscriber base in Nigeria?

Let me talk a little bit about piracy. It is very detrimental to the growth of the creative industry in general. What really happens here is, you need to pump funds into the local industry to make it grow and with piracy, those funds are not available to pump into the industry. Piracy is destroying the broadcast industry, and this is applicable to both the local content providers as well as the international content providers. So, we are very active in terms of combating piracy. And piracy comes in many forms, but we have a systematic approach of continuously taking on piracy on all fronts. On one side, we are protecting our business, but also we are protecting the wider business of broadcasting in terms of future development.

Is piracy perculiar to Nigeria alone?

Piracy is across the continent and you see many forms of piracy, but the action we take is across all of the continent. We see the incident all across the continent.

What other innovations should we expect from DSTV, going forward?

The DSTV and GOTV experience is about technology. Over the years, we have brought cutting edge technology to the markets we have operated in. when we brought digital terrestrial, it was the best standard that we brought.

We are also continuing to expand further on our product line up. So, the latest product that we have brought into the market is the explorer PVR Decoder, and this allows consumers to really bring the internet experience into their homes. So even when you do not have a broadband connectivity you can still experience the best film and sports content. And that is what our business is all about, it’s about the experience. The Explorer PVR is the latest platform for enjoying this experience and we will continue to bring this experience to the various markets.

What will be Multichoice’s contribution to the Digital Switch over?

We have been very very active with various governments across the continent to assist with the digital migration. I think it is important to understand that we have already started digital migration when we launched satellite in Nigeria many years ago. Now that we have got to digital terrestrial we continue to offer our assistance. We are very suitable partner to assist many governments in terms of digital switch over. We have also championed the education of the media on digital migration. We have organised digital dialogue summits for the African media across the continent, including Nigeria. We have the technology, we have the process, and we bring the best expertise to the table. We also have the best of content. All of this we bring to the table.

Many foreign investors in Nigeria do not show commitment by acquiring assets. Is this the same case with Multichoice? Besides, have you come here to stay or are you just a briefcase investor?

We have been in Nigeria for over 20 years. We have local partners and we have invested in numerous properties across the country, From Lagos through Abuja, where we have set up our offices. In the future, we will be setting up significant studios in Nigeria and that construction work has already commenced. So, Multichoice is firmly committed towards Nigeria. We were 20 years ago and we are and into the future. I think our track record says it all. Our commitment spans from investment in properties as well as our philosophy to employ locals manpower. And through this process we hope to give consumers in Nigeria exactly what they want.

One thought on “‘Piracy destroying broadcasting’”

There are a lot of set backs and issues faced in broadcasting but one of the major issues of broadcasting in Nigeria is the issue of piracy and with the constant innovation in digital technology, broadcast signal piracy has been made easy and inexpensive. A pirate can easily capture a television station’s broadcast signal using his/her computer and broadcast it to the world with the aid of the internet. It is therefore important that actions are taken to combat this issue of piracy and eventually put an end to it, as it is a great threat to the future of broadcasting in general.